When “Unfaithfully Yours” was first released in 1948, it was such a
monumental flop (and so expensive) that it put a lot of nails in the
coffin of the career of writer-director-producer Preston Sturges. He
only made one more American movie and a minor film in France some years
later.

For most people today, Preston Sturges isn’t even a forgotten name;
most have never heard of the guy. And this even though he was the most
famous movie director of the 1940s—far more famous than Hitchcock,
Cukor or Ford—and the third highest-paid man in the United States. Only
Ernst Lubitsch—another largely forgotten name—was more famous as a
director, but his fame came in the 1930s.

Between 1939 and 1946, Sturges made one hit after another; not only
were the films very successful, but they were unusual and distinctive,
depicting a very real America—but one that was full of eccentric
screwballs who largely looked alike: Sturges was very well known for
working over and over with the same group of supporting players.

He came from an unusual background. His father was a staid Chicago
businessman, but his mother was Mary Desti, a brilliant but footloose
companion to dancer Isadora Duncan. Desti frequently left young Preston
with friends for months at a time, or would suddenly swoop down, scoop
him up and he’d find himself dressed in a toga, eating grapes on a
Greek hillside while Isadora taught interpretive dancing. Back home in
Chicago, he lived a staid, proper life, suitable to the son of a
business leader. The combination of these wildly disparate upbringings
produced an amazing man.

Unsure of his life, he wound up writing successful plays (but to the
end of his life was still unsure that he was really a writer), which
eventually brought him to Hollywood. His script for “The Power and the
Glory” (1933) was very well-received, and throughout the thirties he
wrote one major film after another, including “Diamond Jim,” “Easy
Living” and Bob Hope’s “Never Say Die.” When he wrote “The Great
McGinty” everyone in town wanted to produce it—but he insisted upon
being the director.

Paramount bit. “The Great McGinty” was immensely popular, and for the
next several years Sturges wrote and directed one hit after another:
“Christmas in July” (1940), “The Lady Eve” (1941), “Sullivan’s Travels”
(1941), “The Palm Beach Story” (1942), “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”
and “Hail the Conquering Hero” (both starring Eddie Bracken, both
1944). His more serious “The Great Moment,” starring one of his
favorites, Joel McCrea, didn’t do well.

He had to make money, as he lived a lavish lifestyle and went through
several marriages. He also ran a popular, expensive restaurant, The
Players, at the eastern end of the Sunset Strip. (The building is still
there, still a restaurant.) It rarely made money, but Sturges poured
his vast salaries into it.

Against the advice of almost everyone who knew him, he embarked on a
production deal with Howard Hughes. (Their motto, in Latin, translated
as “We do not smell from herring.”) Sturges always chafed at studio
interference and thought he’d be let alone by Hughes—but the opposite
happened. The movie, “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock,” was a painful
experience for Sturges and he never made another movie for Hughes.

Are you still with me here?

So he made another deal with a devil—with Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th
Century-Fox. After debating among several ideas, they finally settled
on what became “Unfaithfully Yours.” Despite his billing—the first time
in Hollywood history—as writer, producer AND director, Sturges found
Zanuck taking the movie away from him for its final edit. He made one
more movie for Fox, a routine little comedy he had no faith in, and
fled to Paris.

“Unfaithfully Yours” met with mixed reviews and very poor boxoffice—and
no wonder. It’s very different from his scruffy, crowded comedies of
the early 40s, full of wild eyed wackos and blessed with zippy pacing.
It’s even cerebral, an intimate film with only a few leading characters
and a story in which, actually, nothing happens. This DVD has also
received mixed reviews, but as in 1948, that’s largely because people
don’t give it the patience it deserves. Those who do will be richly
rewarded: there’s about half an hour in this movie, not long before the
end, that’s funnier than almost any similar stretch of time in any
other film. But you have to watch the less-funny first part to get to
that part—it’s not just a matter of patience, but that the early part
is what makes the latter part so damned funny.

Rex Harrison is brilliant, egotistical and fussy conductor Sir Alfred
De Carter, at the height of a brilliant career. His younger, devoted
and very American wife is Daphne (Linda Darnell), who patiently waits
on him hand and foot and suffers willingly through his occasional
temper tantrums. His male secretary, Tony (Kurt Kreuger), is all a
demanding man could want. Sir Alfred is a happy man; he knows his place
in the world, and when he steps up to the podium in front of an
orchestra, baton in hand, he is master of that world. Everyone does
what he wants.

But the day of a major evening concert, he stumbles across disturbing
information which he keeps trying to reject. The house detective (Al
Bridge) at Sir Alfred’s hotel tries to give him incriminating evidence
about Daphne. Sir Alfred indignantly destroys it. But he does visit the
private detective who’d been the leg man for gathering the info. Sir
Alfred is startled when the detective, Sweeney (Edgar Kennedy), turns
out to be a very enthusiastic, knowledgeable fan. (You have the
impression Sir Alfred has rarely met a fan of his work who wasn’t
wearing a tuxedo.) And finally Sir Alfred gets the bad news: it seems
that Daphne spent an hour or so alone with Tony in his room.

Already all too aware of the difference in their ages, Sir Alfred is
almost convinced by this shocking news. He’s distant and brittle to
Daphne, and when he begins conducting the first selection, a moody
piece by Rossini, he imagines an elaborate, film noir-ish plot
involving a recording device, a straight razor, the murder of Daphne
and the framing of Tony. We see it all, underscored by the piece Sir
Alfred is conducting; it concludes with him at Tony’s sentencing,
laughing like a fiend.

Back in the theater, everyone is complimentary, but distracted Sir
Alfred returns to the podium to conduct a richly romantic, melancholy
selection by Wagner. In this fantasy—Sturges called them
“prospects”—it’s all very tragic, and Sir Alfred is hurt but deeply
noble, giving the grieving Daphne a lot of money and fading out of her
life.

There’s one more piece, this one by Tchaikovsky, that leads Sir Alfred
to imagine himself, Daphne and Tony in a vaguely Noel Cowardish crisp
romantic scene that ends with him accidentally killing himself.

After the concert, Sir Alfred evades everyone and returns to his hotel
to put one or more of these plans into practice. And turns into Wile E.
Coyote. Everything works against him, but he persistently continues,
ignoring collapsing chairs, chattering telephones, roulette wheels and
other impedimentia. This is the comic sequence, and it’s perfect.
Absolutely perfect. You can’t say that about many movie sequences.

“Unfaithfully Yours” was ineptly remade under the same title with
Dudley Moore and Nastassja Kinski; it was better than you might expect,
but was intended to be funnier sooner, and reduced the “prospects” to
just one. This movie is little remembered today.

Sturges had wanted James Mason for the conductor, and it really raises
the eyebrows to imagine Mason going through some of the things that
befall Harrison. They go up pretty high just to see Sexy Rexy doing
pratfalls. But now, by gum, you CAN see him do all this brilliantly,
exhaustingly hilarious stuff.

This DVD includes a peculiar abut enthusiastic introduction by Monty
Python’s Terry Jones, who’s clearly a great fan of the film—but did
this bit need to be quite so long? The commentary track by James
Harvey, Brian Henderson and Diane Jacobs (she wrote a biography of
Sturges) is much more interesting—but peculiarly, they don’t mention
the basis of the whole picture. When writing “The Power and the Glory”
back in 1932 or so, Sturges was puzzled as to why the script kept
taking on tones he didn’t intend. He eventually realized it was because
classical music played in another room kept resetting his mental tone.
He was never a huge fan of classical music, but he knew its immense
emotional power. The tone and content of each of Sir Alfred’s fantasies
is shaped and focused by the music he’s conducting at that moment.
(This movie was called “The Symphony Story” early on.) I presume these
three scholars were so close to the material they didn’t think it
necessary to explain the genesis of the movie.

The interview with Sturges’ widow is charming and informative, and so
are some of the stills included on the DVD. For reasons known only to
him, I suppose, Sturges usually directed with a small megaphone
fastened to his belt, and while wearing a fez. If that helped him make
movies as wonderful as those he did for nine years, on with the fez.

There has never been another writer/director like Preston Sturges, but
annoyingly, too few of his films so far are available on DVD. The
Criterion Collection also offers “The Lady Eve” and “Sullivan’s
Travels” (possibly his best movie), and if you dig around you might
turn up “The Palm Beach Story” and “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.” I
suppose everything comes to those who are patient enough long enough.

At least we now have “Unfaithfully Yours” on this DVD. The print is
perfect and rendered in high-definition. But remember: give it time. It
begins as a dry, witty comedy (with a brief, unsuccessful foray into
slapstick involving a fire hose), but concludes with a great, great
sequence.